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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28169463">memento vivere</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeofstarlights/pseuds/madeofstarlights'>madeofstarlights</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunter X Hunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aged-Up Character(s), Aged-Up Kurapika, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Violence, Death, Emotional Hurt, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kurta Clan's Scarlet Eyes (Hunter X Hunter), Memory Related, Mentions of Death, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, The Kurta Clan Massacre (Hunter X Hunter), Tragedy, but nothing graphic and detailed i promise, its just sad and devastating all around im so sorry for this, the implied death was not kurapika's okay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:34:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,441</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28169463</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeofstarlights/pseuds/madeofstarlights</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the burial of the Kurta, a boy returned to his old hometown for the second time. Only, his soft hands were calloused and scarred, and his heart that once was pure was now darkened with grief, hatred, and lust for vengeance. He wasn’t the same soul that the Lukso province knew, with his Kurta clothes swapped for a modern black suit, as if he were constantly expecting a funeral, his messy long hair loosely tied back, and an empty gun in his holster. The chain in his hand dangled free, still stained and sticky with the blood of the last of the Spider, and behind him was a cart of hundreds of jars where scarlet red eyes shone through the darkness.</p><p>Kurapika has finally finished his mission.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>memento vivere</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>okay first of all PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF THE TAGS PLEASE i realize that this is not a light and easy read, and i'd like to warn you again that this fic's content includes the Kurta clan massacre, thoughts on death, and regrets. if any of this is distressing for you, or if you think that this can hurt you in any way, please don't read this. i wouldn't want to harm anyone in any way.</p><p>now... if you're still here. please enjoy this string of words i vomited in a cathartic rage after listening to safe and sound and the lakes by taylor swift lol. ONCE AGAIN PLS BE MINDFUL OF THE TAGS anddd yea! here it is. oh also disclaimer: i dont own hxh</p><p>ALSO this fic was based on a tweet by Choco (@KallutoBrainRot on twitter) so shoutout to them for prompting this!!: https://twitter.com/KallutoBrainRot/status/1335278335211888640?s=20</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The Lukso province was a beautiful place, with its grass that grew evergreen and its flowers that bloomed yearlong. There was a weeping willow perched near the lake with water that looks as clear as the crystals in the underground mine, where most of its people worked and made a living off. Hidden and closed off from the world, it was home to some of the most peculiar floras and faunas, and a small and quaint clan with breathtaking scarlet eyes, the Kurta.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once upon a time, the place was filled with warmth and love. The children laughed and played make-believe with their friends, dreaming about what lies beyond the borders of the province. The late adolescents invited their secret lovers to meet beneath the glow of the moonlight, whispering sweet nothings and gentle promises that one day their hearts will unite as one. The elderlies sat beneath the willow and greeted it as an old friend, watching as the sun bid its adieu and waited for the stars to rise and meet the night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>True, the Kurta was never the most advanced, or sophisticated, or vigorous clan. They had no catalysts, no kings, queens, princes, or princesses. They withheld no knowledge that the world would be envious of, and the riches that they do own were not meant to be shared, thus making them had no leverage in the trading markets. But as ordinary, as they seemed to be, they were happy with their hidden jewels and content with their isolation from the rest of the world. The bond they shared with each other was so strong that it couldn’t be broken, even years after their demise. Their spirits lingered in every inch of the Province, their souls forever tied down to the ground where their body lay lifeless and their eye socket emptied, refusing to leave the place they shared their lives and fates.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There once was a boy whose heart lay in the hearth of the Lukso province, with hands as soft as sunlight. When the massacre strikes, it was said that the last word a Kurta had ever spoken was the boy’s name – a mother, calling out to her son. Perhaps it was a prayer for him to come home and be one with the family, so they could meet their ends and embrace death together. Or perhaps it was a plea for him to never return, to run away from what once was his home, and to spare him from the terrible fate the others suffered. It doesn’t matter which was the truth. The mother died with a Spider’s fang pierced through her heart before she could finish her prayer, and the son returned to a sea of blood and a nightmare from which he will never be woken up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An oblivious traveler stumbled through the province by accident a few days after the horror. What greeted her was an eerie scenery; an empty town, full of wrecked houses and belongings, completely devoid of any living beings, with 127 graves lined up by a still lake, and a dying hearth that crackled from a stone gazebo nearby. When she returned home to her family, she’d told them that she had come across a ghost town, where she saw a blur of a phantom with blonde locks and a blood ruby stone, glinting in the moonlight, that chilled her to her bones that she left immediately. The phantom vanished, the traveler warned everyone she knew to be wary of the southern forest, and no one has ever set foot in the Lukso province ever since.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>… Until ten years after the burial of the Kurta, where the boy returned to his old hometown for the second time. Only, his soft hands were calloused and scarred, and his heart that once was pure was now darkened with grief, hatred, and lust for vengeance. He wasn’t the same soul that the Lukso province knew, with his Kurta clothes swapped for a modern black suit, as if he were constantly expecting a funeral, his messy long hair loosely tied back, and an empty gun in his holster. The chain in his hand dangled free, still stained and sticky with the blood of the last of the Spider, and behind him was a cart of hundreds of jars where scarlet red eyes shone through the darkness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurapika has finally finished his mission.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could smell the ambrosial aroma of wisteria that’s draped over the stone gazebo in the night wind as if it was a gust of air from a bygone era. It took him back to all those years ago, where he would sit with his friends and tell each other stories and myths that they’d found on a library book they shouldn’t have read, enveloped by the warmth of the bonfire that’s being lit up in celebration of their clan’s founding anniversary. He could almost hear his mother’s laughter as she listened to him making up wild extravagant stories to amuse the younger ones. He could almost taste the feast he shared with the rest of his family, eating and chattering the night away without a care in the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the air was cold. There was no laughter, no bonfires, no feasts. The stone gazebo that once was a sacred place for the Kurta’s traditional rites were now abandoned and strangled with wisteria vines and moss, the hearth collecting dust and rust. There was a cart full of eyes waiting to be buried in his hands, and a dagger that had sunk too deep in his heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d lost everything he’s ever known.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every time someone had found out that he was the last survivor of the Kurta massacre, they always gave him a pitying look and told him that he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>lucky</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>blessed </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be alive. They’d failed to realize that there was nothing lucky or blessed about having to hold funeral rites for his whole clan </span>
  <em>
    <span>twice</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Digging out 127 graves all by himself and holding the decomposing corpses of everyone he ever knew, because the Spiders never bothered to give them a proper burial and left them to rot as soon as they robbed their eyes, was not something a twelve years old would consider </span>
  <em>
    <span>lucky </span>
  </em>
  <span>to experience.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And ten years later, digging out the same 127 graves beneath the wild poppy garden his aunt used to tend near the lake where the bodies of his brethren lay, and burying the eyeballs that he couldn’t tell which belonged to whom, felt like the cruelest deja vu.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a miracle that Kurapika hasn’t gone mad with grief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe he has. He just couldn’t tell the difference.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He envies the Spiders. They were together in death. He made sure to spare no souls, leaving no one behind. No one was there to bear the burden of being the sole survivor. No one was there to be forced to continue living while the others of their kind were taken away from them. None of them knew what it felt like to be by themselves, burying the body of the people they shared so many memories with. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurapika wished he’d shared the same merciful fate – to die in the arms of his family, knowing nothing about the darkness that lurks in his heart, to be another tombstone by the late, or to rot and have his body returned to nature by itself. Sometimes he caught himself wishing to be twelve and to never have left. Not because he hoped to defend his clan, but simply because he’d choose to die with them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No matter how hard he wished and how much he prayed, he was still all alone, with only the plague of hatred in his heart to keep himself company. But his biggest fear was coming true; the anger and rage he’s held on to for the last ten years has faded away, replaced by insurmountable grief, a hollow emptiness, and the realization that –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was alone. He was truly alone in this world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even the person staring back at him in the lake reflection wasn’t someone he recognized. It wasn’t someone his family would recognize. Who was the owner of those miserable eyes behind the overgrown blonde locks? The Kurta was said to have such beautiful eyes when they felt intense emotions, but the faint scarlet glow of his eyes just seemed weary, dim, and vacant. When was the last time that face smiled, or laughed, or had colors rose to his cheek? How much could a heart change in the span of ten years? How much could a person lose in the span of one night? How much would his family recognize of him, if he were to join them now?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he chops his hair and burns his suit, would he see a different reflection? Would the bright Kurta boy appear then?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kurapika has always denied it when someone said that the Kurta clan has gone extinct. Because he was here, and there was still air in his lungs, and he was the only chance at giving them the justice they deserved. But looking at the man in the lake, he began to wonder if the Kurta really has ceased to exist, even with their ancestor’s blood still rushing through his veins. All the traditions, festivals, prayers, and rituals that lived within him would mean nothing without anyone he could share with. He was the only one who spoke the language, with no one to talk to. He was the only one who could sing the lullabies and the folk songs, with no one to sing to. He was the only one who remembered the dances, with no partner to dance with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Would his death be the day the memories of the Kurta truly died? Did they exist solely on borrowed time? Everything he knew, generations of knowledge that was engraved in his mind, would they all mean nothing?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What was even the purpose of him slaying the Spider, besides being driven by sheer rage and vengeance? What Kurapika has done and put himself through all these years were all in an attempt to honor his clan and bring them justice, but would they be honored if they knew about the monstrosities he’s committed and the things he’s sacrificed? Were their memories now forever stained with the blood on his hands? What were the worth of his life and his sanity? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a phrase carved in one of the gazebo’s pillars in the middle of the town. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Memento vivere </span>
  </em>
  <span>– remember to live. It was one of the phrases that Kurapika had held close with him through everything that has happened during the last ten years. Whenever he felt like he was on the verge of giving up, or whenever he felt an urge to end his misery, he would repeat the phrase over and over like a mantra. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Memento vivere. Memento vivere. Memento vivere. Remember to live. Remember why you still haven’t given up, why you chose to endure this hell. You have to keep yourself alive at least until you’ve finally avenged your family’s death.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He thought it simply meant ‘remember to </span>
  <em>
    <span>not die</span>
  </em>
  <span>’. But now that the mission was over and he had nothing left to live for, an awful strike of epiphany came to him – he has been </span>
  <em>
    <span>misunderstanding </span>
  </em>
  <span>the whole point of the phrase. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Remember to </span>
  <em>
    <span>live</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>survive, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but live. As a person would, not as a self-destructing machine of spite and revenge.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Live for the memory of the Kurta. Sing the folk songs and the lullabies to others so it could live in them too. Tell their stories, the ones from a happier time, and tell how much they loved each other and how amazing their feasts and festivals were so that people would remember them as who they are and not just of their tragedy. Perhaps that was what it meant to truly honor the memory of his people. Perhaps that’s what he should’ve done instead of destroying the last Kurta boy by his own hands, his own self. He was so enthralled by the theft of his clan’s eyes that he’s forgotten that the Kurta was more than just that. He was so obsessed with his doomed quest of vengeance, even when he knew from the beginning that it would never bring him peace, that he’s forgotten to live as a Kurta, as to how the last of a Kurta </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Who had he wanted to be before this? When that boy dreamed of the future, what kind of person had he wanted to become? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps, ten years ago, the last of the Kurta unknowingly buried his soul too, along with the rest of his family. A poisonous grave that’s only burrowed in his heart, and not by the lake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>**</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A few weeks later after the tenth anniversary of the Kurta burials, a Ruins Hunter rustled through the vines, stepping into a seemingly empty town that’s bathed in sunlight. Ecstatic for discovering new ruins, she dialed her friend that’s waiting nearby, excited to share the good news.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Until her eyes caught the graves by the lake and by the poppy garden.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You found something?” A voice answered from the phone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sinking realization hits. This town is a cemetery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...No. I… accidentally hit the dial button. Sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The person on the other line sighed, “man, I thought you found something. If I’m not mistaken, this place is near the area where the Lukso province is! You know, the one where a whole clan was killed in a single day. Imagine the fame if we can discover that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, well… there’s nothing here. Just some... forests. The killers probably burned the place to the ground too. Let’s just look someplace else, forget about Lukso.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine. I’m still at the same spot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a click, the hunter shut her phone and dropped it in her pocket. She made a beeline for an open field where wildflowers grow, and plucked out a bouquet of irises and daffodils, and put it by the side of a messy lock of hair and an empty gun that lays near the graves. She made a silent prayer for all the souls that were buried there and left without ever looking back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Lukso province was once a beautiful place. There was once a horror that struck the land, unleashing an angel of fury and vengeance lose, and over the years, their existence was questioned by many Hunters, but none was ever close to the truth that it was eventually classified as a myth and a legend. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>May it remain that way.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so.... whew. this was pretty heavy to write. i contemplated whether or not to post this, but i kinda wanted to so here i am. anyway, im... so sorry for this, i feel somewhat guilty for writing this lmao. alright! thank you for reading this :D comments, kudos, and bookmarks are much appreciated! + i'd love to hear some constructive criticism if there's any hehe alsoo if you wanna listen to my rambles and be my friend, feel free to hmu on twitter (@komacinne)!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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